A Journal of Humor and Verbal Anarchy

 

feeding frenzy

Doesn't everybody sit bolt upright in bed at 4 am, prepared to blog? Or is it just Ezra?

Actually, it was a rather late night, too, for Ezra. Not your standard Friday night. First, it was a toss up between checking out the anarchist film festival at See-Spot , making a hajj to the Chanty (language being one of the symbolic dividing lines that separate Ithacans, Ezra went with this choice of monikers for the Chanticleer for the sheer, scratching on a chalkboard, effect that it has on other Ithacans with more refinement and breeding) and, even the option of making an appearance on the party scene.

Usually, Ezra is ready for bed around 9 pm, nodding out with his volume of Thus Spake Zarathustra , holding a little pep rally for the bacteria in his mouth who still have a big night ahead of them. (More on Nietzsche later.) Maybe it's the fact that Ezra has a bone-crushingly boring daytime job, that he's entered his sunset years, or that he's up in the middle of the night, blogging to the masses. (At last count Ezra had two subscribers on a regular basis that he's aware of, will a third please come forth if you're out there!)

Not being able to choose, Ezra opted for all three. He stuck his head in See-Spot only to see on the big screen an endless video loop of George W. pronouncing the word 'terrorist.' So much for anarchist film festivals, Ithaca-style.

Ezra ducked into the big Red Rooster to find Fox News on the television, broadcasting another endless loop , this time Pentagon war footage, punctuated by reports from improbable celebrities like Ollie North and Geraldo Rivera. Holy Cow! There's a target for some postive collateral damage. Geraldo is used to on-the-job accidents - his nose looked like it was hit by a scud missile. Didn't he break it once trying to open Al Capone's Chicago mystery vault? The sound was off on the tv so all I could see was Geraldo picking up a handful of sand and dramatically letting it sift through his fingers. "This is sand," I could imagine him saying in an attempt to impress his audience.

Fox is really stretching it! Why don't they dig up Lt. William Calley and send him to the Middle East as a war correspondent?

Perhaps they'd liven up the rather dull series of shots of Bradley Vehicles crisscrossing the sand by drafting Jennifer Anniston or even Anna Nicole Smith. Does anyone even in bloggerland know who she is? If you don't, your culture is showing. There's a chance you won't fit into post-war America!

Ezra thinks this war is a crock. He places it in a long line of crocks, stretching back to the Vietnam War. The fact that it is being televised like the OJ trial only convinces Ezra that America is fast tracking back to the coney island dementia, the Barnum & Bailey of the mind, from which it started. America has always been the land of opportunity for snake oil salesmen, carny hucksters, sideshow barkers, health pill hawkers, pool hustlers, smut peddlers, con-men, popularizers, plagiarizers, and mountebanks.

Ezra dreads opening his e-mail anymore. Every day he is bombarded with spam; offers to reduce his debt, reduce his mortgage payments, reduce his waistline or increase his bank account, increase his earning potential and increase the size of his you know what.

Every day a message box is waiting for him on the computer at work. Go Bigger!

Size matters in America! That's why we have bigger bombs, bigger bombers, bigger missiles, bigger tanks, bigger cars, bigger houses, bigger yards, bigger television sets, bigger coverage of the war.

That's why NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox News, MSN, and CNN are all competing bring you more detailed, more exciting, more mesmerizing coverage of Bush's rampage in the Middle East. How many talking heads can you fit into a tv screen - as many messengers of death as you can balance on the head of a pin? How many bells, whistles, 3D diagrams, maps, special reports do you need to tell you that folks are dying in the desert?

This feeding frenzy induces a narcosis in viewers back home. An anesthesia that penetrates our consciousness and allows us to jade on images of mutilation, violence, and mass destruction. We have been turned into a nation of voyeurs. Sitting in front of our tv's or computer terminal, waiting for the ultimate snuff film to come on every night.

They (and they know who they are) are preparing us for what's to come.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:02 AM